The cutting surfaces available for example, in a typical household kitchen, have known deficiencies, all of which limit their usefulness in food preparation. Plastic and wood kitchen counter tops may be marred by preparing food on their surfaces. Ceramic counter top surfaces may dull the knife or other utensil being utilized. Many surfaces utilized in a kitchen have sufficient porosity so as to harbor bacteria. These include wooden cutting boards and certain of the rigid plastic transportable boards. A documented concern over the transport of bacteria, such as salmonella bacteria commonly found on chicken to other food subsequently processed on the cutting surface, has lead to recommendations ranging from disinfecting the surfaces to preparing the chicken only after other food has been prepared. The concern over bacterial contamination is especially difficult to resolve with fixed cutting surfaces, such as counter tops and chopping blocks. Even those portable cutting surfaces are not easily sterilized, and may not withstand the heat of dish washing. A requirement for sterilizing after use leads to the requirement of multiple portable devices for the preparation of a single meal.
After food is prepared by conventional techniques, it must be handled again to move it from the cutting surface to the container.
Various previous devices have been proposed to resolve the known deficiencies of cutting surfaces. These include cutting surfaces which are protected by disposable tear-off sheets, including thin plastic sheets that may be placed over conventional surfaces. However, known tear-off or cover sheets have not had sufficient strength to avoid perforation during food preparation, or to act as an effective transport for transferring the food after preparation to another container.
Hinged cutting surfaces, which may be folded along two hinge lines in order to provide a funneling effect for the transfer of prepared food articles to a container, have been proposed. However, such devices are not easily cleaned because of the crevices formed by the hinging effect, are expensive and are limited to the formation of a crude trough, and will not conform to the shape of the container to which the food is to be transferred.
Resilient cutting surfaces, which may be flexed into an arcuate trough to provide a funneling effect for the transfer of food articles, have also been proposed. However, such products, when sufficiently thin to be flexed for transfer, do not have sufficient strength to resist perforation and for supporting the food articles when cantilevered from one end. Furthermore, such known prior cutting surfaces may be formed from roll stock, which results in the finished product having a bias toward reassuming a curved configuration, which makes it difficult to maintain the sheet material in contact with the supporting surface as food articles are loaded onto the surface and during preparation. Those articles having sufficient rigidity are often opaque or translucent and have a rough texture, making it difficult to identify and confirm the cleanliness of the articles.
It is therefore desirable to have a flexible article handling sheet which lies flat on a supporting surface, and resists perforation during normal household cutting and chopping operations. Such an article is particularly desirable where it has sufficient cantilever beam strength to lift and transport a substantial quantity of prepared food articles from a sheet to a suitable container of varying shape.